BoDeans

The title of BoDeans' debut album, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, alludes to the Rolling Stones song "Shattered," and to promote it, Llanas, Neumann, Griffin, and Hoffman went by the stage names Sammy, Beau, Bob, and Guy BoDean, a la the Ramones. Both bands have strongly influenced BoDeans' bracing guitar rock; the band's wistful pop sensibility, however, is evocative of Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. Chief songwriters Sam Llanas and Kurt Neumann, whose plangent harmonies are a key feature of the band’s sound, met in high school in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In Milwaukee they hooked up with drummer Guy Hoffman, who left the band in 1987. Subsequent drummers have included Bo Conlon (on the road), Danny Gayol (on Black and White and the double-disc live set Joe Dirt Car), honorary BoDean Kenny Aronoff of John Mellencamp fame (on Home, Go Slow Down, and on the road), and Nick Kitsos (on Blend). Keyboardist Susan Julian also toured with the band briefly and appeared on Home.

Throughout most of their career, BoDeans won critical praise and amassed a loyal cult following. The group had a taste of Top 40 popularity when the producers of the hit television series Party of Five selected the catchy “Closer to Free,” from Go Slow Down, as the show’s theme song; the weekly exposure caused the tune to rise to #16 on the pop singles chart in 1996. The band hoped that history would repeat itself with its cover of the Beatles’ “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” the theme to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Party of Five spinoff, Time of Your Life (1997), but neither the series nor the song caught on.

While continuing to tour together as BoDeans, the founding members recorded side projects in the late ’90s. Llanas formed the band Absinthe with former BoDeans drummer Hoffman and guitarist/bassist Jim Eannelli; BoDeans drummer Kitsos appeared on Absinthe’s self-released 1998 album as well. Oarfin Records released Neumann’s solo disc, Shy Dog, in 2000.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)